Why Punish Customers for Finding Bugs?

Postscript: Omnistar saw my post and has been very helpful since then. They told me that because of this they’ve changed the way they deal with these messages in the future and that they didn’t know I was a hosting customer. They asked me to remove the post below, but I still think there’s value in having it here. I am happy they’re making things better and wish them luck.

~~~

I set up Omnistar Tell-a-Friend for a client on a hosting service which won’t let us use scripts. The password was lost and when we tried to use the “password lost link” we got a page-not-found, error 404 page (still does.)

So, I send a message to support@omnistartell to tell them it’s broken. It’s a one click-reproducible issue, so I figure it’s an easy fix. I get a tracking number and move on with my day. For 99.9% of all software companies out there that would be enough.

But then I get the message back:

=== PLEASE REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE ===
—– has responded to your ticket which was numbered 1234

The time of the response was: 01-24-2008 17:36 PM
Their response was:
For us to fix this problem we need you to fill out our bug fix form here:
www.omnistaretools.com/bugfix

Please let me know when you have filled out our bug fix form.
—
Thank you for your business with Omnistar Interactive.

The link is to a full length form I need to fill out. Bullshit. Somebody forgot to tell these guys about what it means to be the provider, versus the paying customer. If your software has a bug, and I was nice enough to point it out, then THEY should file the damn bugfix form ON MY BEHALF. And, it certainly wouldn’t have hurt to say “And we’re sorry you had trouble.”

It’s kind of like the long forms you have to fill out when your bags are lost. The airlines should be grabbing you a cold drink and asking what kind of music you like while they fill out the damn forms.